Sales growth for Apple's Mac platform has outpaced the PC market for the 31st time in the past 32 quarters, keeping the trend alive. But surprisingly, Apple's premium-priced computers were actually driven by growth in emerging markets last quarter, new data shows.

Chart via Needham & Co.

The fact that the Mac outpaced the overall PC market last quarter is not surprising --?Apple has seen its share of the worldwide PC market grow from 2.1 percent in 2005 to 5.5 percent in 2013, Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf noted on Monday. But in the March quarter, Mac sales actually underperformed in established markets.

Year-over-year growth for Mac sales was down in North America, according to data from Gartner. In addition, PC sales growth exceeded the Mac in Europe and Japan.

Wolf, who summarized the data in a note to investors that was provided to AppleInsider, is baffled by this result.

"We can see no obvious explanation for the disparity between developed and developing regions," he said. "It could be a one-quarter blip, which only the data for June will reveal. Or it could represent an inflection point in the Mac's fortunes. Only time will tell."

Apple's growth in emerging markets comes in spite of the fact that the average selling price of a new Mac has remained well above $1,000, placing the devices in a class -- and price range -- beyond the low-margin nature of the rest of the PC business. Market watchers believe the continuing decline in PC sales is attributable to the rise of touchscreen tablets, particularly Apple's iPad and iPad mini, which compete at lower price points.

But it's also worth noting that Apple recently began experimenting with much lower pricing on its Mac lineup thus far in 2014. Notably, a lack of new next-generation chips from Intel has helped push Apple to focus on more affordable options with its latest Mac models.

In addition to the new $1,099 iMac that launched in June, Apple also slashed $100 off its suggested pricing for new MacBook Airs that debuted in April to a new entry price of $899, making them the most affordable mass-market notebooks the company has ever sold.

Resellers have undercut those prices even further, likely with the blessing of Apple, which does not itself offer regular discounts or promotional pricing. Steep discounts went into effect on the new MacBook Air and iMac models almost immediately, most notably pushing the entry-level iMac down from $1,099 to just $979 in sales late last month.

Those discounts, however, didn't take effect until Apple began launching its new 2014 Mac models in April, after the March quarter data from Gartner. That means that any results from sales and discounts in the just-concluded June quarter will not be revealed until the company's fiscal third quarter earnings call next Tuesday.

Good news but doesn't this contradict an article from just the other day. I was just reading PED on Fortune where he pointed out it PCs only outpaced Apple because they included tablets in many counts but not iPads. So, do i assume this is a more accurate count of only Macs and PCs, no tablets from either side?

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Good news but doesn't this contradict an article from just the other day. I was just reading PED on Fortune where he pointed out it PCs only outpaced Apple because they included tablets in many counts but not iPads. So, do i assume this is a more accurate count of only Macs and PCs, no tablets from either side?

Seems to me that "computer" should be defined as "anything with a CPU that doesn't run iOS." That way we can be sure that iPads are not unfairly inflating Apple's numbers.

(Of course, when counting tablet sales, anything from kid toys to dedicated readers to touchscreen computers should be counted to keep from unfairly inflating iPad numbers...)

What an analysis who is confused and can not explain the data. Okay hell must have frozen over that an analysis was unable to spin the data in a way which they could not manipulate it in a way which was bad for Apple and profitable to them.

Maybe analysis operating theories have been wrong all along, maybe consumers given the choose of cheap over a product with real value they will choose real value.

Or maybe the people with no money choose a phone over a PC and those with money bough a phone and a mac. So we now have phones canalizing cheap PC sales.

Americans are so obsessed with cheap prices that they wouldn't know quality if it punched them in the face. I'm not surprised that growth would occur abroad and would not be surprised if that is the future Apple is banking on.

If you think you might at some point want to develop an iOS app, you need to get a Mac. I don't think it explains all of the sales bump in emerging markets, but I'm sure it's responsible for some of it. That, and the fact that the emerging middle class there needs its status symbols and that glowing Apple logo in the back of the screen is as ostentatious as the "LV" pattern on a Vuitton purse.

I see the growth of PC in the US, Europe and Japan as caused by two things. One that business is starting to pick up and two, the XP EOL situation. Lots of businesses are upgrading to avoid any problems with lack of support and security patches, especially since Chrome will be ending support for XP as well.

In the emerging markets, I can only comment on Latin America but I have observed that wealthier people tend to buy Macs and people with lower income tend to get by on whatever they have, usually a handed down XP machine, at least until it breaks, and then buy the cheapest thing they can find, perhaps even a used PC. Nevertheless I am surprised how strong Mac sales appear in that chart for Latin America, because up until only a couple years ago it was almost exclusively Windows, at least in my experiences there.

I see the growth of PC in the US, Europe and Japan as caused by two things. One that business is starting to pick up and two, the XP EOL situation. Lots of businesses are upgrading to avoid any problems with lack of support and security patches, especially since Chrome will be ending support for XP as well.

In the emerging markets, I can only comment on Latin America but I have observed that wealthier people tend to buy Macs and people with lower income tend to get by on whatever they have, usually a handed down XP machine, at least until it breaks, and then buy the cheapest thing they can find, perhaps even a used PC. Nevertheless I am surprised how strong Mac sales appear in that chart for Latin America, because up until only a couple years ago it was almost exclusively Windows, at least in my experiences there.

Remeber it is far easier to get a big percentage increase if your volumes are already low.

Until recently, it was hard to buy macs in China not just distribution but because they really didn't understand why anyone would pay 5-10 times the price for a personal computer AND it didn't run WINDOWS out of the box (in Chinese, of course). But just like the switchover in the US in the 90's when PC users would/could not believe there was a better experience, once they started to see others using it and of course, as income rose and of course, the world class look & feel of a mac (along with the halo of an ipad & iphone & Steve Jobs), its not really a surprise ... and of course, like in the US, when you mostly use a computer to surf the net, watch videos, org photos and email, why not spend a littlemore to get a world class piece of hardware and the cachet of the Apple name?

Users know that PC's are junk. EVERYONE knows that, even the hardcore PC fanboys, and those kids just flat-out don't want to admit it in public.

Macs are just the best machines around. Whether they be iMacs, Pros, or MacBooks, you get something called "VALUE" for your money. Sure, a $1000 iMac is more expensive than a $300 BestBuy dumpster special.

My PC friends always contact me to ask how to decontaminate their virus/spyware-laden systems, corrupted registries, or just resolve really bad performance issues. Heck, I make a nice killing on PC side jobs. I'm amazed, just amazed as to how much torture some friends tolerate using their PC's even for simple things like writing word documents and deal with system instabilities. I whip open my 3yr-old Macbook Air and proceed to tell them how much better off will be compared to their $299 laptop deal.

Of course, they say "We can't afford a Mac", to which I respond... "But see what going the cheapest route gets you!" They all agree, yet go right back to trying to determine why their laptop is blowing out so much heat just from running idle. Figure that.

there is a simple reason for this observation. mac computers live much longer so there is less "churn" in the eatablished market of apple's numbers especially now with free well-working software updates. Every pc owner I know rebuys their conputers every 3-5 years... mac owners keep theirs longer.

That, and the fact that the emerging middle class there needs its status symbols and that glowing Apple logo in the back of the screen is as ostentatious as the "LV" pattern on a Vuitton purse.

Or could it be quality? My iMac is 7 years old, runs the latest version of OS X (& will run the next one too), has never needed rebuilding, repairing, replacing and helped me to avoid both Windows Vista (the reason I moved over from Windows after 10 years of PC use from Win95 to WinXP) and Windows 8.

Overall cost of ownership - both purchase price and my time needing to keep the thing working - has been far less than the 7 years of PC use that predated the iMac's purchase so for many of us (but not all) status has nothing to do with owning a Mac.